Abolitionist Approach to Animal Rights | every sentient being the right not to be treated as a resource The abolitionist approach does not support the idea that some species of nonhumans, such as nonhuman great apes, are more deserving of moral or legal protection than other species on the ground that the former are more similar to humans With respect to being treated as a human resource, all sentient beings— human and nonhuman—are equal The abolitionist approach also rejects animal welfare on practical grounds Animals are property; they are defined as economic commodities with only extrinsic or conditional value To the extent that we protect animal interests, we so only when it provides a benefit—usually an economic benefit—to humans As a result, the protection of animal welfare is, for the most part, very limited Regulation does not decrease animal suffering in any significant way, and it does not decrease demand by making animal exploitation more expensive On the contrary, welfare reform generally increases production efficiency so that it becomes cheaper to produce animal products To the extent that a welfare regulation imposes any sort of additional cost on animal production, that added cost is de minimis Moreover, welfare reform makes the public feel more comfortable about using animal products, and perpetuates rather than discourages animal exploitation There is absolutely no empirical evidence that animal welfare reform will lead to abolition or to significantly decreased animal use Abolitionism and Veganism Although veganism may represent a matter of diet or lifestyle for some, ethical veganism is a profound moral and political commitment to abolition on the individual level and extends not only to matters of food, but to the wearing or use of animal products Ethical veganism is the personal rejection of the commodity status of nonhuman animals and the notion that animals have less moral value than humans Indeed, ethical veganism is the only position that is consistent with the recognition that, for purposes of being treated as a thing, the lives of humans and nonhumans are morally equivalent Ethical veganism must be the unequivocal moral baseline of any social and political movement that recognizes that nonhuman animals have inherent or intrinsic moral value and are not resources for human use Ethical vegans believe that we as people will never even be able to see the moral problem with animal use as long as we continue to use animals We will never find our moral compass as long as animals are on our plates, or on our backs or feet, or in the lotions that we apply to our faces Animal advocates who claim to favor animal rights and to want to abolish animal exploitation, but continue to eat or use animal products, are no different from those who claimed to be in favor of human rights but continued to own slaves Moreover, there is no coherent distinction between flesh and dairy or eggs Animals exploited in the dairy or egg industries often live longer, are treated worse, and end up in the same slaughterhouses as their meat counterparts There is as much if not more suffering and death in dairy or egg products than in flesh products, but there is certainly no morally relevant distinction between or among them The most important form of incremental change on a social level is creative, non-violent education about veganism and the need to abolish, not merely to